The Biographical Significance of Flight and Exile

The exploration of sociological aspects of flight and exile as a universal phenomenon is still in its infancy.¹ One can therefore speak in this context of a "problem of the theoretical comprehension of exile."² In Western countries, including Germany, the issues of flight and exile are dominated by discussions relating solely to questions of a legal nature, or to asylum and international law. These discussions are primarily based on a nationalistically oriented migration and refugee policy, aimed at keeping out people seeking refuge in these countries.³

Thus, within the framework of the European Union, authorities have kept refugees from entering the Federal Republic of Germany since 1992 by stepping up deterrents such as compulsory visas, lowering the quotas of asylum-seekers granted asylum, and rejecting a constructive immigration policy.⁴

One of the key mechanisms of this policy of exclusion, particularly toward refugees from what are commonly known as "developing countries," is their separation into various formal categories such as: "economic refugees," or "political refugees." This prevailing classification according to "type of refugee" requires a certain perception of the phenomena of flight and exile, in which the complex structure of the refugee's motives are reduced to the dichotomy of political persecution and economic need. However, the fact that refugees quite clearly have agency in the processes of flight migration and can have differing motives for their actions has rarely been the subject of political or sociological discourse. Thus, the concept of "flight" is accounted for from the very outset by "external pressures" and serves as a point of departure for determining or legitimating asylum in the host society. As a consequence of this, the concept of "political persecution" undergoes a simplification, in that only refugees persecuted by state authorities are granted the right of asylum. People commonly referred to as economic refugees are not included in the class of "political refugees" and are sent back to their countries of origin on the basis of this. Women, too, who are persecuted on grounds of their gender, are not acknowledged by the authorities as having the right of asylum. ⁵

At the same time the restrictive definition of flight as something "forced" also determines the perception of exile as a "process suffered." Thus, the prevailing exile literature continues to draw a comparison between "exile/emigration" on the one hand, and "sickness" (Krankheit) on the other.⁶

This perception of exile in host societies is reinforced both explicitly by legal regulations and implicitly by theoretical assumptions. It is assumed that people living in exile will return to their countries of origin at some point in the future when the political circumstances there have altered. The "automatic" conclusion deduced from this is that their stay in the respective country of exile is of a temporary nature, and thus a condition in which time and space play no role.

This one-sided definition of exile precludes a reflection of the process-like nature of exile in terms of individual and social changes. It ignores the fact that changes in the life of the person living in exile could well give rise to a wish to remain in their country of exile permanently. The case of German exiles who did not return to Germany after the collapse of the Nazi regime serves as a historical example of this phenomenon. That exiles themselves cling to the myth of return is due in part to the fact that the host society always perceives them as foreigners and, in the final analysis, as undesirable people. To conclude, it becomes apparent that the process of exile is usually presented as a "process suffered" as the result of forced flight.

In view of this problem it is necessary to expand the definitions of flight and exile in order to allow the intricate layers of refugees' biographical and collective experiences to come to light.⁷ To this end, I developed a research project, aimed at redefining the concepts of flight and exile from the biographical perspective of refugees, and conducted from 1992 to 1996.⁸ This was carried out by reconstructing the experiences of exile of a specific generation...